Published on: 1/10/2013
Did the universe know it was her last breath

or did it have to wait with the rest of us
for the lack of another?

Did it carry her gently away
like a kitten in the maw
to a warm dark place,
or did it rip things from her body
the way wedding rings get torn
from the sky-blue fingers
of battlefield brisance?

I hate to think of her erasing
into nothing more than nothing more.

It would tickle her pink to know
that one crisp autumn afternoon
in the not too far away, a little boy,
having spent all of his Saturday playing
outside, rushes into his warm house,
grabs a shiny red apple, takes a bite
as juice leaks down his chin

from where the universe has allowed
a little bit of my mother to run.